how are you guys affording to get copies of characters let alone pull so frequently?

I'm genuinely really curious after seeing the lunite prices.

So often I see people saying they have copies for many characters, or saying that they will 100% S6 a character, and this is really frequent. A couple days ago I lost on Qiuyuan's banner, and thought since my birthday is soon, why not treat myself and maybe get a couple copies? Then I go to the shop, and see that for 40 pulls, only HALFWAY to pity, is $100?? And USD too, it's even more for me to convert. I just can't believe how ridiculously priced it is, you could spend $200 and still not even get the character you want. I know that once a year you can get double upon purchasing, but still, it is ridiculous. Unless the majority of players are filthy rich I don't understand how everyone is able to pull almost every new character like they say. It made me super upset man, just wanted a Qiuyuan bday present but I'm a broke uni student 😔